Lab 6 — IaC Security: Checkov + KICS + custom policy

.gitignore

@@ -28,3 +28,4 @@ node_modules/
 .venv/
 .DS_Store
 *.swp
+labs/lab6/results/

labs/lab6/policies/my-custom-policy.yaml

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+metadata:
+  id: "CKV2_CUSTOM_1"
+  name: "Ensure every S3 bucket carries a DataClassification tag"
+  category: "GENERAL_SECURITY"
+  severity: "HIGH"
+definition:
+  cond_type: "attribute"
+  resource_types:
+    - "aws_s3_bucket"
+  attribute: "tags.DataClassification"
+  operator: "exists"

submissions/lab6.md

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+# Lab 6 — Submission
+
+## Task 1: Checkov on Terraform + Pulumi
+
+### Terraform scan
+- Total checks: 92 (passed + failed)
+- Passed: 35
+- Failed: 57
+
+> Note: severity is intentionally blank below — the open-source edition of Checkov does **not**
+> populate per-finding severity (it is a Prisma Cloud paid feature). The failed checks come back
+> with `severity: null`, so instead of a severity table the meaningful breakdown for the OSS tool is
+> by rule frequency (below).
+
+| Severity | Count |
+|----------|------:|
+| Critical | n/a (OSS Checkov) |
+| High | n/a (OSS Checkov) |
+| Medium | n/a (OSS Checkov) |
+| Low | n/a (OSS Checkov) |
+| **Failed (total)** | 57 |
+
+### Top 5 rule IDs (by frequency)
+| Rule ID | Count | What it checks |
+|---------|------:|----------------|
+| CKV_AWS_289 | 4 | Ensure IAM policies does not allow permissions management / resource exposure without constraints |
+| CKV_AWS_355 | 4 | Ensure no IAM policies documents allow `"*"` as a statement's resource for restrictable actions |
+| CKV_AWS_23 | 3 | Ensure every security group and rule has a description |
+| CKV_AWS_288 | 3 | Ensure IAM policies does not allow data exfiltration |
+| CKV_AWS_290 | 3 | Ensure IAM policies does not allow write access without constraints |
+
+### Pulumi scan (via KICS — Checkov 3.x has no native Pulumi framework)
+| Severity | Count |
+|----------|------:|
+| Critical | 1 |
+| High | 2 |
+| Medium | 1 |
+| Low | 0 |
+| Info | 2 |
+| **Total** | 6 |
+
+### Module-leverage analysis (Lecture 6 slide 17)
+Four of the top-five Terraform findings — CKV_AWS_289, CKV_AWS_288, CKV_AWS_290 and CKV_AWS_355
+(14 findings combined) — are the same root cause: over-permissive IAM policies that grant actions
+or resources with `"*"` wildcards and no constraints. They all attach to the shared IAM policy
+module, so a single module-level fix — replacing the wildcard `Action`/`Resource` with an explicit,
+least-privilege list (and a condition block) in that one module — would clear all four rules at
+once. That is far higher leverage than patching 14 individual resources, and it raises the
+least-privilege baseline for every resource that consumes the module.
+
+---
+
+## Task 2: KICS on Ansible
+
+### Severity breakdown
+| Severity | Count |
+|----------|------:|
+| CRITICAL | 0 |
+| HIGH | 9 |
+| MEDIUM | 0 |
+| LOW | 1 |
+| INFO | 0 |
+| **Total** | 10 |
+
+### Top 5 KICS queries (by frequency)
+| Query | Severity | Files |
+|-------|----------|------:|
+| Passwords And Secrets - Generic Password | HIGH | 6 |
+| Passwords And Secrets - Password in URL | HIGH | 2 |
+| Passwords And Secrets - Generic Secret | HIGH | 1 |
+| Unpinned Package Version | LOW | 1 |
+
+### Checkov vs KICS — when to use which? (Lecture 6 slide 10)
+- **Where Checkov did better (Terraform):** Checkov's 2,500-policy AWS catalog, including
+  graph-based CKV2 checks, surfaced fine-grained, cloud-semantic IAM problems — e.g. distinguishing
+  permissions-management vs data-exfiltration vs write wildcards (CKV_AWS_288/289/290) on a single
+  policy document. That depth of provider-specific reasoning on Terraform is Checkov's strength.
+- **Where KICS did better (Ansible & Pulumi):** KICS natively understands formats Checkov 3.x does
+  not scan directly — it parsed the Ansible playbook and the Pulumi source out of the box via its
+  Rego query engine, and was strong at secret detection (it found hardcoded passwords, passwords in
+  URLs, and generic secrets in the playbook). Breadth of format coverage plus secret-hunting is
+  KICS's strength; without it, the Ansible and Pulumi misconfigurations would have gone unscanned.
+- **Finding only one tool caught:** KICS flagged the hardcoded database password (Passwords And
+  Secrets — Generic Password, CWE-798) and the publicly-accessible RDS instance in the **Pulumi**
+  source — resources Checkov simply could not scan, since it has no Pulumi framework. Conversely,
+  Checkov's graph IAM checks on Terraform are more granular than KICS's equivalents.
+
+---
+
+## Bonus: Custom Checkov Policy
+
+### Policy file (labs/lab6/policies/my-custom-policy.yaml)
+```yaml
+metadata:
+  id: "CKV2_CUSTOM_1"
+  name: "Ensure every S3 bucket carries a DataClassification tag"
+  category: "GENERAL_SECURITY"
+  severity: "HIGH"
+definition:
+  cond_type: "attribute"
+  resource_types:
+    - "aws_s3_bucket"
+  attribute: "tags.DataClassification"
+  operator: "exists"
+```
+
+### Rule fires
+The custom rule `CKV2_CUSTOM_1` fired on 2 S3 buckets in the Terraform sample, both missing the
+required `DataClassification` tag:
+
+```
+check_id: CKV2_CUSTOM_1  (HIGH)  FAILED
+  resource: aws_s3_bucket.public_data
+  file: /labs/lab6/vulnerable-iac/terraform/main.tf  (lines 13-21)
+  tags present: { Name = "Public Data Bucket" }   # DataClassification missing
+  evaluated_keys: tags/DataClassification
+
+check_id: CKV2_CUSTOM_1  (HIGH)  FAILED
+  resource: aws_s3_bucket.unencrypted_data
+  file: /labs/lab6/vulnerable-iac/terraform/main.tf  (lines 24-33)
+  tags present: (none)                             # DataClassification missing
+  evaluated_keys: tags/DataClassification
+```
+
+### Why this rule matters
+Mandatory data-classification tagging is a governance control that underpins almost every other
+data-protection requirement: without knowing which buckets hold regulated data (PII, PCI, PHI) you
+cannot scope encryption, access reviews, retention, or breach response correctly. Frameworks such as
+NIST 800-53 (RA-2 security categorization) and the CIS AWS Benchmark expect resources holding
+sensitive data to be identifiable, and real incidents — e.g. the 2019 Capital One breach, where a
+misconfigured S3-fronting resource exposed 100M+ records — show that untracked, unclassified storage
+is exactly where sensitive data leaks from. Enforcing the tag at scan time stops unclassified buckets
+from ever reaching production.